“I never thought art would take me anywhere. As a kid, I just wanted to build a house and fill it with candy.

Art is a way of expressing myself more than any language. Irritations get into the oyster’s shell, but it does the loveliest thing with that irritation, it makes a pearl. We can take irritations and make pearls out of them. Forgiving people makes pearls out of anger.

In West Africa, art is used as character development, such as teaching patience. There are very bright colors in the West African sky and you feel like you can touch the sun. What I see with my eyes is what is reflected in my art.”